Seriously, everyone, chill.
So here’s how Nevada went: Badly for the Nevada Democratic Party. Just like it went badly for them when they failed to provide translators and we ended up in a big pointless fight with each other over their mistake. Just like it went badly in the county conventions, when Clinton won the Caucus, and yet somehow Bernie won the Clark County convention. And it went badly again last night, when the entire chaotic process came crashing down and ended up in an ugly, ugly situation.
There are both Clinton and Bernie supporters in Nevada who don’t trust the process now and think their votes were stolen. Clinton folks who are mad that somehow the county convention flipped the other way, and now Sanders supporters furious that the state convention didn’t reflect the county convention.
Apparently, there was some violence and some shouting. Chairs were thrown. There was a medical emergency, but every shred of information I have said it was entirely unrelated to anything which happened at the caucus. At the end of the night the Nevada Democratic Party got kicked out of the hotel they were holding their convention in.
This happened because caucuses are undemocratic institutions prone to chicanery, theft, and other shenanigans. Caucuses never work well, and we ought to do away with them, certainly.
But we are not going to see violence at the National Convention.
Okay, so sure, there are a bunch of angry folks on twitter and reddit who say they want to disrupt stuff, but as far as I can tell, and I’m good at figuring out who people are based on their profiles, none of those folks are delegates.
One account calling for violence at the convention is from someone who has boasted in other posts that they aren’t on the voter rolls, and never vote. These are angry people shouting nonsense into the void, many of whom don’t actually vote, and none of whom are actual delegates from where I’ve looked.
Nevada is sending a handful of people to the convention. I don’t think any of the selected delegates are likely to be from the group of Bernie delegates who — according to WaPo and Ralston — became violent at the Nevada Convention.
If instead of a chaotic process like the Nevada Caucus, we’d had an actual week-long primary election with plenty of time for early voting, none of this would have happened.
Think of the Bernie supporters you actually know. Think of the people you’ve interacted with as they’re out canvassing, or who’ve called your phone.
Those are the folks who represent the vast majority of the millions who’ve voted for Bernie.
They’re not some horde of unwashed manospherites who think that ethics in games journalism is one of the most important issues facing the United States. Actual Bernie supporters are too busy phone banking to spend much time swarming over pro-Clinton statements like fundamentalists to contrary opinion.
I know tons of Bernie supporters, including a handful of delegates. I almost was one of his supporters myself. I have too much faith in them to believe that the isolated violence in Nevada was anything but a fluke.
What happened at that caucus was completely unacceptable from the first night. From start to finish, this has been a mess. After the complete mess that Nevada’s caucus process has been this entire election season, we shouldn’t feel surprised or blindsided by the complete and utter shit show it became at the very end.
So chill. This is a Nevada problem. Let’s hope they fix it. And while we’re at it, let’s get rid of caucuses altogether.
Beware the media.
There are going to be a ton of people now with a vested financial interest in making it look like violence is coming to the Democratic Primary, that Bernie Supporters are going to turn violent, and that the Democratic party is some kind of powder keg.
If it bleeds, it leads.
They want Clinton folks to feel threatened and under attack by Bernie folks. They want Bernie folks to feel like they’re being universally blamed for the actions of a handful of idiots. They want people to try and justify the idiocy that happened in Nevada.
They want to shake the jar, because if they can get us actually fighting each other at conventions the resulting chaos will bring in a ton of ad money.
The media is about to attempt to create a narrative out of a single isolated incident. Watch them closely. This should be instructive. If we pay attention, we’ll actually be able to see the gears of the outrage machine as it grinds into motion.
What would be nice though is that maybe, for once, we could all collectively decide not to fall for this sort of nonsense.